negro the ear of the lonely traveller dreaming among the orange-groves of lofty St. Elmo, comes faintly from the shore. You land, penetrate the mysteries of the city, and still the wonder grows. You call a coach, and find only an odd-looking gig, with shafts sixteen feet long, and wheels six feet in circumference, driven by postilion, three parts jack-boots and one part silverlaced jacket. Into this singular vehicle you fling yourself, and find that to the gig of your dear native land this tropical gig is as the pineapple is to the pearmain, so luxurious is it, so cradling, so provocative of bland indifference to all worldly cares. You reach your inn, and find it in appearance a Moorish palace-in general discomfort a German boarding-house, in expense a Bond Street hotel. You find that you are to live on two meals a day; a breakfast that begins with eggs and rice, is sustained by fried pork and Catalan wine, and ends with coffee and cigars; a dinner, every dish of which is a voyage of discovery. You are to sleep on a cot which resembles a square drum-head of vast dimensions, without mattress or coverlets, in a room with a red-tiled floor, and with windows bare of glass, but barred like those of a Bastile. Boots is a native African-an ex-cannibal for aught you know-wonderfully tattooed, and the laundress an athletic young negress who smokes authentic long-nines. You walk out through streets narrow as those of Pompeii, past shops open to the ground, like those of Naples, and shaded with heavy awnings that often sweep across the street. Everything is patent to your gaze, and nobody seems to be aware of the fact. Only now and then you pass some vast pile of yellow stone, stately as the palaces of Genoa, and catch through the great archway a glimpse of court-yards, fountaincooled and palm-shaded, that suggest dreams of Eastern seclusion and invisible beauty. You dream on this fine dream, for in all your walk you meet no female form save of the Pariah class, unless, perchance, you stumble on some fair foreigner, at sight of whose bonnet the incurious native deigns to look up from his business in-doors, or his lounge in the shade, with a sudden stare and a half-pitying smile, which provoke you to wonder that you had ever ceased to feel how fearful a thing the bonnet of civilization is. Watercarriers, balancing their jars, mules half-hidden from the eye by fresh bundles of green fodder, borne on either side, large cream-colored oxen, superb as the mild-eyed monsters of Lombardy, pulling primeval carts by means of yokes fastened in front of the horns, crowd up the narrow streets. And through them all the frequent calesero, swinging in his heavy saddle, steers the clumsy length of his quitrin with careless, certain skill. The signs of the shops startle you, for if you are to take them au pied de la lettre, all the retail business of Havana is in the hands of saints, goddesses, and heroes, of birds, beasts, and beauties. St. Dominic deals in healing drugs, St. Anthony boldly handles laces, muslin, and ribbons. Diana dispenses sweets to all the dandies of the town, the Empress Eugenie meekly measures tapes, and the blessed Sun himself has really "proved a micher," and cheats in cosmetics. The greater merchants, like the burghers of the Middle Ages, often occupy with their families the elegant upper floors of the building, which in its first story serves them for a warehouse. Not less mediæval is the confusion of quarters. Next door to the begrimed hovel of a dealer in coal, rises the palatial home of the opulent marquis; St. Giles and St. James elbow each other. Have we not passed the Pillars of Hercules, and shall we not "look the blue straits over," for the heights of Morocco?-Gan Eden. |